Does anyone perhaps have any articles on the environmental issues India is facing and/or how the population increase is or will be affecting these issues? Im writing an essay on this and a few leads would be appreciated.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A green tax may still be some way off from reality in the country, but corporate houses are already taking up the
responsibility to contribute in their own way to save the environment even without being threatened by any penalty.

Corporates in sectors as diverse as tyre manufacturing, hotels and tourism are actively pursuing ideas that save on carbon emissions and corporate gatherings are beginning to feature a 'green tambola' that aims to reinforce in everyone's mind that June 5 is the world environment day.

"Awareness is on the rise, and it is encouraging to see that green initiatives are being undertaken by companies in diverse sectors", says Kamaleshwar Sharan, president of Greentech Foundation, a Delhi-based NGO that focuses on promoting awareness about environment protection.

Mr Sharan says new ideas in emission-savings are being developed by individual corporates across the country and that Greentech Foundation was taking the lead in spreading those ideas across the corporate and social spectrum so that more people would join the green bandwagon.

At its Mysore plant, JK Tyres have introduced novel wooden boxes with hinges to transport tyres, so that the boxes are reusable, thereby saving timber. Adoption of the idea across the tyre-manufacturing sector itself is expected to lead to substantial savings in use of wood.

The Orchid hotels in Mumbai and Delhi have hit upon the idea of using live plants with flowers from flower beds to decorate tables or key areas in the hotel properties for a special occasion and then replant them back in the garden, instead of using fresh cut flowers each time.

The ITC Welcomgroup property in Mumbai is utilizing its kitchen waste to make manure, while the CGH Earth group in Kerala has a strong leaning on eco-friendliness, even insisting that its suppliers provide everything in biodegradable packaging.

Mr Sharan said additional director in the ministry of environment and forest, RK Suri had initiated the idea of the 'green tambola' in which the number 5, when picked, is announced by linking it to the world environment day of June 5, to reinforce that date in people's minds.

New Delhi : India may lose one of its crucial lifelines the south west monsoon, which brings rains across the country during the summers, in the next 150 years, warns a new study by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

The phenomenon is the result of global warming which has led to increase in the rate of temperature rise over Arabian Sea, researchers say.

This rise is reducing temperature difference between land and sea, known as Temperature Gradient (TG), responsible for attracting rain causing winds from Arabian Sea towards Indian mainland.

"For climatology, 30 years variations are considered. The decreasing trend (of TG) is highly significant and in another 150 years or so, it may tend to zero," lead author S M Bawiskar, a scientist at the Pune-based institute, said.

Once the gradient becomes zero, Bawiskar warns, the monsoon winds will be replaced by dry easterly winds thus disturbing the flow of south-west monsoon. He found that average temperature over Arabian Sea was 18.77 degrees Celsius during 1948-77 but it has increased by 0.87 degrees to touch 19.64 degrees during 1979-2008.

The results published in the Journal of Earth System Science show that rate of temperature increase over sea is higher than land which has narrowed the Gradient by 1.11 degrees during the said period. The below normal rains during the current season are also an indication of the changes taking place in the temperature over the Arabian sea.

The Indian Meteorology Department has shown a 23 per cent reduced rain activity during the present season, which may be an indication of this phenomenon.

"With decreasing TG, monsoon current over Arabian sea would become weak. This will lead to reduced rainfall activity over Indian Peninsula. The break like circulation will prevail for a longer period of time, which we are already experiencing during this monsoon," Bawiskar said.

Global warming, which is increasing the average temperature across the planet, is also behind the increasing temperature over the Arabian sea, the study says. During monsoon, Arabian sea and Indian peninsula are under the grip of westerlies (winds coming from west) in the lower troposphere.

These winds are mainly responsible for bringing rains over the Indian land mass and are established during the monsoon due to the Temperature Gradient.

NEW DELHI: In a frank admission, the Centre on Friday said in the Lok Sabha that Ganga and Yamuna were “no cleaner” now than two decades ago, despite spending over Rs 1,700 crore for checking their pollution. “I admit with full responsibility that Ganga and Yamuna are no cleaner than 20 years ago,” environment minister Jairam Ramesh responded to a calling-attention motion on checking pollution in rivers and lakes in India.

He said a “determined and renewed effort” was required to cleanse these major rivers. To a question by BJP MP Adityanath on the cleanliness of the two major rivers of North India, Mr Ramesh said he could provide figures on their pollution levels but “I myself don’t believe these numbers... For a layman, the answer is a depressing no.”

While over Rs 816 crore was spent on two phases of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP), Rs 682 crore was spent on the first phase of the Yamuna Action Plan (YAP) in the first phase and another Rs 190 crore on the second phase so far, he said.

Referring to the National Ganga River Basin Authority headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he said global tender for project consultants to prepare a basin management plan have attracted 30 bids and the selection would be done in the next two months.

According, to data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a pair of satellites that sense changes in Earth’s gravity field and associated mass distribution, including water masses stored above or below Earth’s surface, more than 26 cubic miles of ground water disappeared from aquifers in areas of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and the capital territory of Delhi between 2002 and 2008. The scientists have found that ground water levels in northern India have been declining by as much as one foot per year over the past decade.

Data relating to 2006 shows a staggering fall of 2 metres in several Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka districts in comparison to previous years. Tamil Nadu was worse with levels dropping by 2-4 metres. More than 20% of monitoring wells in Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Bihar, West Bengal, east Madhya Pradesh and east Rajasthan registered a decline of more than 2 metres, water fluctuation in January 2007 in comparison to the average between 1997 and 2006 revealed. Parts of UP and the hilly areas of the north registered improved groundwater use.

The 2007 Central Groung Water Board (CGWB) report states 18% of assessed units in Andhra Pradesh, 78% in Delhi, 49% in Haryana, 75% in Punjab, 59% in Rajasthan, 37% in Tamil Nadu, 14% in Gujarat and 12% in Uttarakhand are “over-exploited.” Its projections of groundwater availability for irrigation in 2025 — not surprisingly — show negative figures for Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan.

Only in some areas, like the hilly terrain of West Bengal, Assam, parts of Meghalaya, Tripura and Jharkhand, there is rise in water levels by more than 2m as in the case in parts of the sub-Himalayas. The constant worry on groundwater is increased with the drought covering nearly 250 of the country’s 500-odd districts this year.

In Punjab, out of the 138 blocks, 103 have over exploited groundwater, five have reached critical levels and another four are nearing the red zone. The groundwater development in Punjab is 145% which means that water is being used at a rate of 45% more from underground sources than natural systems.

The pressure on groundwater is bound to increase as the government planning to battle drought by sinking hundreds of tube wells. The green states of the north are now witnessing a situation where extensive irrigation required is not adequately met by the surface water alone.

Ground water levels respond slowly to changes in weather and can take months or years to replenish once pumped for irrigation. Mr. Matthew Rodell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, answered to this question, “The layer of unsaturated soil acts as a buffer between the atmosphere and the aquifer. When it rains, the surface soil becomes wetter and surface water bodies increase in volume, but it takes time to percolate to the aquifer, and if it is a small amount of rain it may not replenish the aquifer at all. If you look at a time series of soil moisture, surface water, and groundwater, there is always a time lag between changes in the surface storages and the groundwater, also, high frequency variability in the surface stores are smoothed out in the groundwater response. It can take months or years for the aquifer to recover depending on how deep the aquifer is and how depleted it has become.”

The results of this research have been published in the latest issue of Nature. It is based on data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites.

Any suggestions to face this problem, Since TG is decreasing is there any hope..?

Quote:

Originally Posted by MINUS

New Delhi : India may lose one of its crucial lifelines the south west monsoon, which brings rains across the country during the summers, in the next 150 years, warns a new study by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

The phenomenon is the result of global warming which has led to increase in the rate of temperature rise over Arabian Sea, researchers say.

This rise is reducing temperature difference between land and sea, known as Temperature Gradient (TG), responsible for attracting rain causing winds from Arabian Sea towards Indian mainland.

"For climatology, 30 years variations are considered. The decreasing trend (of TG) is highly significant and in another 150 years or so, it may tend to zero," lead author S M Bawiskar, a scientist at the Pune-based institute, said.

Once the gradient becomes zero, Bawiskar warns, the monsoon winds will be replaced by dry easterly winds thus disturbing the flow of south-west monsoon. He found that average temperature over Arabian Sea was 18.77 degrees Celsius during 1948-77 but it has increased by 0.87 degrees to touch 19.64 degrees during 1979-2008.

The results published in the Journal of Earth System Science show that rate of temperature increase over sea is higher than land which has narrowed the Gradient by 1.11 degrees during the said period. The below normal rains during the current season are also an indication of the changes taking place in the temperature over the Arabian sea.

The Indian Meteorology Department has shown a 23 per cent reduced rain activity during the present season, which may be an indication of this phenomenon.

"With decreasing TG, monsoon current over Arabian sea would become weak. This will lead to reduced rainfall activity over Indian Peninsula. The break like circulation will prevail for a longer period of time, which we are already experiencing during this monsoon," Bawiskar said.

Global warming, which is increasing the average temperature across the planet, is also behind the increasing temperature over the Arabian sea, the study says. During monsoon, Arabian sea and Indian peninsula are under the grip of westerlies (winds coming from west) in the lower troposphere.

These winds are mainly responsible for bringing rains over the Indian land mass and are established during the monsoon due to

Growing crops with deeper root systems, using charcoal-based composts and applying sustainable agriculture practices could help soils retain the equivalent of around four-fifths of annual emissions released by the burning of fossils fuels, they said.

In a move aimed at helping the coastal States and islands in India to build resilience to climate change, scientists from 13 research institutes are assessing the vulnerabilities of the strategically important Lakshadweep islands and developing technologies for mitigation and adaptation.

Named Vulnerability Assessment and Development of Adaptation Strategies for Climate Change Impact with special reference to the coastal and island ecosystem of India (VACCIN), the multidisciplinary project involves scientists from nine CSIR institutes, besides IIT, Kharagpur, University of Kolkata, Fishery Survey of India and Space Applications Centre.

Rs.12.5-crore project

The Rs.12.5-crore project seeks to assess the impact of climate change on the Indian monsoon and marine life and the carbon sequestration potential of mangroves. It will try to identify local climate change indicators and establish the link between climate change and vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and chikungunya and water-borne diseases such as leptospirosis.

During the project, the scientists will record the evidence of climate change using paleo-climatic records from corals and sediments.

Greenpeace study estimates air pollution kills more than 1 million Indians each year

Not a single city in northern India meets international air quality standards, according to a Greenpeace report that estimates air pollution kills more than 1 million Indians each year.

The report released last week also shows that levels of the most dangerous airborne pollutants grew by 13 per cent in India between 2010 and 2015 but fell at least 15 per cent over the same period in China, the U.S. and Europe.

It adds to a growing body of research showing the problem of toxic air is not limited only to the Indian capital, Delhi, but afflicts almost all the country’s large cities, particularly in the north.

Air quality data gathered for 2015 from state pollution control boards and under freedom of information laws showed “there are virtually no places in India complying with World Health Organisation and national ambient air quality (NAAQ) standards, and most cities are critically polluted”, the report said.

“Except for a few places in southern India which complied with NAAQ standards, the entire country is experiencing a public health crisis due to high air pollution levels.”

In all of the 20 cities monitored in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the level of PM10 – airborne pollutants such as dust, mould and chemical droplets less than 10 micrometers in diameter – exceeded international limits by at least 100 per cent.

Ghaziabad, an Uttar Pradesh city that borders Delhi, exceeded the limits by more than 400 per cent, the report showed.

But the PM10 limits also exceeded in cities where the problem is less publicised, such as Hyderabad, Pune and Thane, where pollution density was about twice the safe level.

Cities in the south-western state of Karnataka generally enjoyed good air quality, with 12 of the 21 places with monitoring stations, including Mangalore and Mysore, recording PM10 levels well below the safe annual average limit of 60 micrograms.

Delhi’s average level of PM2.5, the smallest and most harmful pollutants, was 128 micrograms in 2015 compared with 81 micrograms in Beijing that year.

Last week, Delhi’s high court directed administrators in Punjab, an agricultural northern state where crop burning each October sends torrents of smog billowing across north India, to cease the practice from this year.

India’s supreme court has also banned fireworks from Delhi after last year’s Diwali festival caused levels of some pollutants to reach 42 times the safe limit and forced the closure of schools, construction sites and a coal-fired power station.(c) Guardian News & Media Ltd, 2017

Except for a few places in southern India which complied with NAAQ standards, the entire country is experiencing a public health crisis due to high air pollution levels

Good, bad and ugly

The PM10 limits also exceeded in cities where the problem is less publicised, such as Hyderabad, Pune and Thane, where pollution density was about twice the safe level.

Ghaziabad exceeded the limits by more than 400 per cent, the report showed.

Cities in the south-western state of Karnataka generally enjoyed good air quality, with 12 of the 21 places with monitoring stations, including Mangalore and Mysore, recording PM10 levels well below the safe annual average limit of 60 micrograms.

Poor air quality is the result of several factors including road dust, open fires, vehicle exhaust fumes, industrial emissions and the burning of crop residue.

The Lancet’s global burden of disease study shows about 3,283 Indians die each day due to exposure to outdoor air pollution.

NFF chairperson M Illango said so far, it was thought plastic waste causes damage only to the environment and ecology of shallow waters. But now, recent research confirms that the micro plastic and plastic nano-granules can damage the deep sea organisms. The organic material that is found in the top layers of the sea and that reach the sea bottom is called marine snow, he said, adding that this becomes part of the food for the living organism that live in the depth of the deep seas.

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Illango also demanded the usage of micro plastic fibres in cosmetic and cleansing products should be totally banned.

Citing the research done by Bristol and Oxford universities of UK, he said they have come up with findings that the micro plastic granules and fibres can reach the bottom of the deep sea and cause damage to the marine organisms in the deep sea. "Beauty products, toothpastes, cleansing products and such other products seem to have micro plastic fibres and micro beads smaller than 5 mm length. When dresses made of synthetic fibres are washed, micro particles of polyester, nylon, acrylic acids enter the sea and get to the depth. The researches done in Central Atlantic Sea and Indian Ocean in which vehicles that could be remote-controlled were used to reach the depth of the sea and marine organisms from depth were collected. Hermit crabs, lobsters, sea cucumbers and such organisms were collected from a depth of 300 metres to 1,800 metres and found that they contain micro plastic fibres. This is the first proof that marine organisms living in such depths could consume micro plastic. Dr Michelle Taylor, the head of the research team says that the plastic microns that originate in the lands thousands of miles away, could reach such depth and this is a serious warning bell for us," he pointed out.

The ministry selected Karnataka, Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh based on an alarming drop in the groundwater table due to over exploitation.

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According to the ministry, in India, 245 billion cubic metres of goundwater is drawn every year. This represents about 25% of the total global groundwater drawn. With the over 80% of rural and urban domestic water supplies in India depending on groundwater, the government is working on its better management for socioeconomic development, said the official.

As part of its efforts to rejuvenate water sources, the ministry has already started mapping ground water where there is highest exploitation. The mapping also helps understand sustainability of drawing groundwater and its contamination, said the official.

In a 2 degree Celsius-warmer world, Kolkata could experience deadly conditions at least once a year

Tom Matthews | The Conversation March 28, 2017 Last Updated at 08:41 IST

Deadly heat stress is projected to affect hundreds of millions more people each year under relatively little additional climate warming. The Paris Agreement commits the international community to limit global warming to no more than 2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial (late 19th century) air temperatures, with an aspirational target of 1.5 degree Celsius. In our latest research, which looked at the impact of global temperature rises on magacities, we found that even if 1.5 degree Celsius is achieved, large increases in the frequency of deadly heat are expected. The Conversation

By 2050 about 350m more people living in megacities could be exposed to deadly heat each year.

Humans become “heat stressed” when the body absorbs more heat than is tolerable. If core body temperature rises just a few degrees above 37 degree Celsius, deadly heatstroke can result. By using its cooling system – sweating – the human body can maintain a safe temperature even if air temperatures rise above 37 degree Celsius. This mechanism works better in a drier atmosphere (which is why steam rooms feel hotter than saunas – even at the same air temperature). The heat index is a measure that combines this humidity effect with air temperature to provide a “feels like” temperature. A heat index in excess of about 40.6 degree Celsius is considered dangerous to human health.